


Forced Respite

by VelkynKarma



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: (because trevor), Blood, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Hypothermia, Injury, Mild Language, Whump, Wilderness Survival, may not be season 3 compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:40:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23121877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VelkynKarma/pseuds/VelkynKarma
Summary: Dracula's hordes of the night aren't the only danger for travelers in Wallachia, or his only allies. Nature should never be underestimated, either. And when an unexpected blizzard assaults the trio on their way to Belmont Hold, their willpower—and their teamwork—will be sorely tested.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 96





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place between S2E2, “Old Homes,” and S2E3, “Shadow Battles,” with the assumption that it took several days to travel from Gresit to Belmont Hold.
> 
> Please note I’m writing strictly based on only the first two seasons of the Netflix series, and have virtually no familiarity with the games. Apologies in advance if any of the details presented don’t line up with the original canon of the games, or anything that shows up in season 3 (which I haven't watched and don't intend to).
> 
> I’m also aware that Alucard is not technically a full vampire, but rather a damphyr/damphir. However, since the show itself never actually refers to him with this term in the first 2 seasons at least, I’m using ‘vampire’ to stay close to the source material.

“There’s a storm coming,” Trevor says abruptly, staring up at the sky through the trees.

Sypha blinks, and looks up from the horses and the reins in her hands to the sky as well. The day is overcast and cool, but that’s hardly surprising. Too many days have been dreary and lifeless, after Dracula’s attack on Wallachia had begun. She sees no signs of dark clouds, nor does she feel the telltale winds of an approaching storm. 

“I don’t think so,” she says after a moment. “It looks clear to me.”

“Trust me,” Trevor says, glaring at the sky. “I’ve seen enough of them to know when a big one is coming. We’d best look for shelter—be stupid to be out in it when it gets here.”

“And where do you expect to find shelter for your mythical, non-existent storm?” Alucard asks cooly, from beneath the awning of the covered wagon. Although he needs no shelter from the sunlight at all, much less today with the lack of visible sun anyway, he still prefers the interior of the wagon while traveling. The horses can grow skittish if he’s around them too long, probably instinctively aware of his vampiric nature, and it tends to make the ride uncomfortable for all of them. 

“There isn’t a city or even a village for miles,” Alucard continues, as Trevor turns around to shoot him a glare. “We passed Arges a day ago. By your own words, your family home is still three days from here. Where would you have us hide, Belmont?”

“Anywhere we could find,” Trevor snaps back. “A cave. A sheltered grove. Old ruins. Whatever keeps the wind and the snow out.”

“By all means,” Alucard says. “Let us do as you say then. But remember, any time you waste hiding from a storm that isn’t coming takes time from our journey to your library. Every extra evening we delay is another evening where my father’s hordes of the night ravage the land and slaughter more of your people. Each of those deaths will be on us. Is that worth stopping for, Belmont?”

“We can’t stake Dracula if we’re dead,  _ Alucard,”  _ Trevor growls back. “I’ve no fear of death, but if I’m to die, I’d rather do it properly in a fight instead of fucking freezing to death on the road!” 

Sypha sighs, exasperated. They’ve been on the road for several days now, and survived at least two attacks from Dracula’s vile creatures together, yet still these two insist on bickering. Alucard delights in picking the exact things to say to get under Trevor’s skin, and Trevor is far too easy to bait into a fight. It’s not a good match by any means. 

_ Why couldn’t the prophecy have made this easier?  _ she thinks to herself.  _ Why couldn’t I have been stuck with a noble Belmont from the stories, or a sleeping soldier that treats his comrades honorably? I would even settle for a pair that understands the basic premise of teamwork.  _ Honestly, she was the only one here with any  _ sense.  _

She keeps her thoughts to herself, though. For now, at least. Instead, she says, “I really don’t think we have anything to worry about. I don’t sense anything unusual, and the sky looks fine.”

“And does your magic allow you to sense when storms are coming?” Trevor asks, with his usual unimpressed scowl.

“No,” she retorts, a touch annoyed. “But I am proficient in wind magic, and I know the signs for when it builds, naturally or otherwise. I sense nothing. I think it will be fine—and Alucard does have a point. We are short on time.”

Behind her in the wagon, Alucard makes an amused scoffing noise. 

Trevor crosses his arms and scowls. “So neither of you intend to listen to my advice. When I’m the one with the most survival experience of the lot of us.  _ You’ve  _ lived in a fancy castle your whole damn life,” he snaps, gesturing accusingly at Alucard, “and  _ you’ve  _ always traveled with a caravan.” He waves a hand at Sypha. “Have either of you ever been out in a blizzard before?”

“I haven’t,” Sypha admits. Alucard’s silence behind them is answer enough from him. 

“I  _ have,”  _ Trevor said. “They kill.”

“You certainly are the expert on killing things,” Alucard says cooly. “If we need your advice in that regard, we shall certainly ask.” 

Trevor grumbles. “One day, somebody will fucking listen to me when I know what I’m talking about,” he mutters under his breath.

Sypha sighs in exasperation again, and settles in for a long ride.

The next hour and a half are relatively silent, other than the clop of horse’s hooves and the creaking of the wagon. Alucard has graced them with his silence, to Sypha’s relief. Next to her Trevor appears to be doing the grown man-child equivalent of pouting, scowling off into the trees with his arms crossed. 

She’s grateful for the quiet. It gives her time to think. What will they find at this Belmont Hold? Will such a notorious family of monster hunters even have anything in the way of spells or skills that could help them pin something as large and incomprehensible as Dracula’s traveling castle? 

What if they don’t find the answers there—what then? Alucard wasn’t wrong. Their time _is_ limited. Her people can spread Trevor’s knowledge of how to fight demons to the common folk, but they cannot warn all of Wallachia in time, and there will be a slaughter every night. If the answers aren’t there—

She’s broken from her thoughts as a snowflake drifts down in front of her face, gentle and serene. Another follows, and another. Blinking, she looks up into the sky, and finds swirls of white falling down on them, growing thicker and heavier by the second.

Trevor gives the sky a thoroughly unimpressed look, shoots her a pointed glare, and then turns around on the wagon bench to stare at Alucard. “Well?”

Sypha can’t help but look over her shoulder as well. Alucard’s expression is displeased and a little disgusted, like he just drank spoiled milk, but all he says is, “Yes, I see it. You’ve made your point, Belmont.”

“I fucking told you so. Both of you,” Trevor says. The words are triumphant, but there’s no humor in his voice, and his expression is grim. “Now do you plan on listening to me?”

Alucard looks ready to argue on principle, but Sypha throws up a hand to silence him, and he quiets. “I think we’d better,” she says, after a moment. “Now I  _ do  _ feel changes in the wind. Faint, but they will grow stronger very soon.”

“Then we need to move fast,” Trevor says, as he hops off the wagon. “We need shelter. Some place to wait out the storm, out of the wind and the snow.”

“My earlier point still stands,” Alucard says, although his tone is more neutral than mocking this time, as he slips gracefully to his feet and exits the wagon. “There isn’t a settlement for miles. Where would you have us stop?”

“There’s got to be something around here we can use,” Trevor says, glancing up and down the road. Sypha does as well, leaping down from the wagon after halting the horses, but nothing immediately discerning comes to her attention. Both sides of the dirt road are hedged in by trees, interspersed with patches of snow-covered open ground here and there, but there is no convenient cave or abandoned cottage waiting to shelter them. 

“I don’t see anything,” she finally says. The wind she’d felt coming earlier whips at her hair and robes, and sends flurries of snowflakes scattering around her. “And I’ll see even less in  _ this.”  _

“Can you do something about it with your magic?” Trevor asks. 

She tries, concentrating and conjuring a stillness in the air, or reaching out to the snowflakes and forming them into ice shards to drop at her feet. But catching the wind is impossible when there is so much of it  _ everywhere _ , and for all the snow she removes from around them, the sky immediately has more to give. 

She finally shakes her head, defeated. “A blizzard is too big for one Speaker-Magician, it seems.”

Trevor swears under his breath. “Alucard?”

“The reduced visibility is irritating, but not debilitating,” the vampire reports. “I could probably find some sort of shelter in this, if I left you.” 

“But can you travel safely in this?” Trevor presses. “It will get heavier, and thicker. The snow will pile up on the ground quickly. It will be harder to track where you’ve been, the longer this goes on.”

“Not for me, it won’t,” Alucard says. “I have ways to travel the storm safely. Is that what you wish of me? To find shelter?”

“Yes,” Trevor says. To his credit, his voice is only the tiniest bit grudging, at having to assign such an important task to a person he does not particularly like. “Hurry. We need cover as soon as possible.”

“And what of you two?” Alucard asks, glancing back and forth between them. “The storm will not abate while I search. You are in just as much danger here, if what you say is true.”

“We can’t follow you. We’ll probably slow you down, and waste our strength. We wait here, and prep things as much as we can, until you can lead us directly to whatever you find.” Trevor turns to Sypha. “Can you do that thing you did back in Gresit? The ring of fire you made around me—without any fuel?”

“I can,” Sypha says. “Though it is not an easy spell to maintain, and requires concentration. I cannot do it indefinitely.” 

All spells took energy, in the same way fighting and running took energy. The larger the spell, the more impossibly it twisted the natural order of things, the more energy it took. Converting mist or water into ice shards and walls was not so hard; it already existed, and she merely convinced it to take another form it already knew of. Air was always around them, and merely had to be convinced to move in the direction she desired. But conjuring fire where it had nothing to feed upon burned her own stores instead, and the more flames were needed, the more energy it bled from her. 

“It doesn’t need to be forever,” Trevor said. “It only needs to last long enough to keep us alive until Alucard gets back.” 

Sypha nods, closing her eyes and summoning the flames. She presses two fingers to her forehead, and holds two fingers on her other hand out, slowly drawing a circle in her mind’s eye around their halted wagon. In life, flames flicker into existence around their little stretch of road, safely circling the wagon, the horses, and the three of them. 

The heat is a sudden, welcome relief. She hadn’t realized how cold the beating winds and flurries of snow had already made her. But the roaring flames fill her with warmth again, melting away the snowfall and reducing the icy needles of wind to a cooler breeze.

But it isn’t as easy to maintain as it usually is. In Gresit, there had been only a mild breeze and a light snowfall, when she’d shielded Trevor from the angry mobs of townsfolk. Here, the blizzard’s winds beat at the flames, trying hard to snuff them out. The fires spark angrily, and flail against the storm’s assault, feeding greedily on her energies to survive. It takes most of her concentration to both maintain them and keep them from setting her companions, the animals, or the wagon alight. 

“Hurry,” she whispers, after a moment. “This is difficult. The storm fights me.”

“Alucard—go,” Trevor says. “Hurry.”

“Of course,” the vampire answers. His dark coat and pale hair are flung about by the whipping breeze, but he himself seems unaffected by the winds, immovable and strong. He nods once, leaps over the flame wall, and disappears into the heavy flurries beyond. 

Sypha keeps her focus on the spell. Normally she is adept at casting while moving, but this spell is so difficult to maintain against the blizzard’s assault that she’s afraid to move too much, and risk breaking her concentration. The storm fights her at every turn, and beats at her flames angrily, hungrily. 

She is beginning to regret not having listened to Trevor earlier. He certainly had not been wrong when he said these storms killed. 

Trevor is not idle while she concentrates on her spell. He leaps back into the wagon and begins digging through their few supplies, making a mess of her carefully stored boxes and bags. He recovers his fur-lined cloak from the mess and secures it around his shoulders, then drags their bedrolls and spare blankets from the stacks. With one of his knives, he slices open one of the cloth sacks full of food supplies, and uppends the whole thing onto the wagon floor.

“That is our food!” Sypha hisses through her concentration. “We need that.”

“We need this more,” Trevor says, gesturing with the sack. He slices it into two pieces, stuffs them through his belt, and stomps over to her through the half-melted snow within the flame ring. “Can you move?”

“I would prefer not to—”

“Fine,” he says, and without further inquiry he picks her up like a sack of potatoes and drops her onto the wagon bench.

She scowls at him, but manages to maintain her concentration, as well as the position of her fingers for the cast. “Rude! What on Earth was  _ that  _ for?”

“I assume you’d like to keep your feet,” Trevor says, with his usual irritated scowl. To her surprise, he takes one of the pieces of sacking and starts wrapping her left foot, sandal and all. “Honestly, bloody Speakers. I’ve told you before, I hate how you all dress like this. There’s snow everywhere, for God’s sake.” 

Sypha blinks, but has to admit, even that little bit of extra wrapping does do wonders for her exposed toes. The snow gathering around her feet had already started to chill them, and the wind certainly didn’t help.

“Oh,” she says, after a moment. “Thank you.”

Trevor merely grunts in answer, tying off the first wrapping and moving to her right foot. “Men lose limbs in weather like this,” he mutters. “They get so cold parts of them die. I’ve seen it. You don’t want any flesh exposed in this.”

Sypha nods. She’d heard stories, herself, although her caravan had never gone so far north they’d needed to treat people with such ailments. 

Trevor finishes with the second wrapping, ties it off, and then retrieves one of the blankets. He settles it around her shoulders, fastens it firmly to keep the wind from ripping it away, and gives her a short pat on the arm, careful not to dislodge her casting. “Keep that spell up,” he orders gruffly. “Long as you can. I’ll check the horses.”

She nods, burrowing into the extra warmth he’d granted her, and concentrates on the spell. 

For a while, she is able to keep the flame walls high. The blizzard is strong, a great force of nature, but the will of Sypha Belnades is equal to that. She pictures the flames roaring high and straight, unaffected by the winds and the flurries, and for a while it radiates warmth. Inside the ring is still uncomfortably cool, with half melted snow and little gusts that sweep past her defenses, but it’s better than the outside.

But the blizzard seems to have a will of its own, and when she does not relent, it grows stronger. The winds grow fiercer, screaming like the demons of the night hordes, beating at her flames relentlessly. Flurries of snow are thrown in her face, on her hands, on her now damp blanket, causing her casting fingers to tremble alarmingly. The flame walls sputter, and flick out of control, no longer tall and proud as a barrier. They grow smaller, weaker, and still they burn away at her energy, hungry and greedy. She can feel herself weakening, and her arms beginning to shake with effort and with cold. 

Trevor looks up from the horses as the flames grow weaker, and immediately calls out to her. “What’s wrong?”

“The storm...grows stronger,” she gasps. She makes a frantic gesture with her outstretched hand, and the flames roar higher for a moment, but just as quickly they die down once again. “Maintaining the flames in this wind...it is difficult.” She pauses. “Can you find wood? Fuel to feed the flames?”

Trevor obligingly does so, removing his whip from his left hip and snapping the weapon out at a nearby branch. The old, dead wood cracks easily enough, and he yanks it back to their position inside the flame ring, tossing it on the nearest section of fire.

The wood catches immediately as the fire consumes it greedily, and for a moment a sliver of relief passes through Sypha as those flames stop feeding off of her own personal energies. But the feeling is short lived. The wind pounces on the flames like one of the night creatures themselves, and the flame is immediately snuffed out. 

Sypha mutters to herself and relights the flame. The wind immediately snuffs it again, and she realizes there is no way to make this easier. If she does not force the flames to stay lit, they will not. And she is not sure how much longer she can do so.

She sags wearily. She isn’t sure how long she’s been maintaining the ring against the force of a blizzard, but it already feels like far too long. And yet if she relents, it will be their death, so she grits her teeth, bites her lip, and forces the last of her concentration into the spell.

It holds, for a little while longer. But inevitably, the flame ring sputters and grows lower and lower, weaker and weaker. Until at last, the flames snuff out entirely, and Sypha leans wearily against the frame of the wagon, energy spent. 

It takes her a moment to realize Trevor is shaking her shoulder. “Up, Sypha! What’s wrong?” And more grumbling, under his breath, “Where the hell is that damn vampire?”

“I’m sorry,” Sypha murmurs, shaking herself wearily back to focus. “I can’t...the storm is too strong.”

“You did well enough,” Trevor says. “Bought us some time, anyway. Get in the wagon.”

Sypha frowns. “And what are  _ you  _ doing?” 

“I’ll join you in a minute. I’m cutting the horses loose.”

“You’re  _ what?  _ We need them!”

But Trevor shakes his head. “They won’t do us any good carrying us to whatever place Alucard finds, they’re too weak. But they’ve got a better shot surviving on their own than they do hitched to a cart with no shelter. If we live through this, and they’re still alive, Alucard can probably sniff them out again.” 

It isn’t a great option, but Sypha concedes it’s probably the best one they have. She nods, and wearily crawls into the wagon, wrapping one of the bedrolls Trevor had set out around her shivering shoulders and curling up against the inside boards. The wagon doesn’t provide much in the way of shelter, or comfort—the cloth covering only barely cuts down on the ripping winds, and there are gaps that let the flurries through in full force. But it’s all they have, and it’s better than being outside. 

True to his word, Trevor doesn’t take long to join her. He frees the horses from their harnesses, and both animals run off shrieking into the trees, mad with terror. Sypha hopes they make it; the poor creatures didn’t deserve this. Then he crawls into the wagon next to her, collecting the remaining blanket and bedroll and wrapping up in them under his cloak.

“Here,” he says, just loud enough to be heard over the whipping winds, as he settles down next to her. He lifts his arm, and the blankets and thick fur-lined cloak with it, leaving enough space against him for another. “We’re stuck here until Alucard returns, and those Speaker’s robes aren’t made for this.” 

She accepts the invitation without a moment’s thought, ducking under his arm and curling as close as possible, and he drops the other side of the blankets and his thick cloak around her shoulders and pulls it closed. He’s  _ warm,  _ or at least warmer than the wagon, and his enormous cloak is enough to envelop the both of them and trap at least a little heat in. 

The church would probably have quite a lot to say about the ‘inappropriateness’ of their closeness, blizzard or no. Sypha could not care less what they think. She’s a Speaker, and has lived surrounded by family as long as she can remember. She has never endured a storm like this before, but she has memories of her caravan huddling together in their carts on cold nights, sharing warmth and closeness and safety. This feels familiar, and safe, or as safe as one can get in the middle of a blizzard. 

Even more importantly, it’s  _ warm,  _ or at least warmer than before. She is desperately greedy for that, even despite the stench of stale ale, sweat, vomit and blood that clings to most of Trevor’s clothes. She will take the stink over the biting cold of the storm outside. 

He clearly agrees, because he clings to her like a child’s stuffed toy, drawing comfort from what little there is of her own warmth. His thick cloak had hidden how badly the cold was affecting him, but this close she could feel him shivering from the temperatures too.

“We need to stay awake,” Trevor says after a moment of huddling against the wind in their makeshift, terrible shelter. “Until Alucard gets back. Men who fall asleep in storms like this never wake again.”

She nods against his shoulder, and then paws at the cloak he holds closed with one hand around them both. “Open this a little.”

“And let the cold in? Has the chill already gone to your head?”

She elbows him in the ribs, causing a small, choked noise in his throat. “I have an idea. Unless you want me to set you on fire,  _ open the cloak.” _

He grumbles, but obligingly does so, cracking it open just a tad. Sypha concentrates, holding out two fingers for a moment as a bead of fire energy hovers between them, and then twists her wrist. A handful of flames appear in her cupped palm, with just enough room to breathe and not set Trevor or his cloak on fire.

He raises his eyebrows. “I thought you couldn’t do that?”

“This is much smaller. It takes less energy,” Sypha says. “And as long as we are blocking the wind with the cloak, it will not be as hard to maintain.” 

He grunts in appreciation. “All right. Better than nothing.” 

She nods. For a while they fall into silence, huddled close to each other and the little handful of dancing flames in her palm. It’s not nearly enough to warm them fully, or even to calm their shivering and chattering teeth, but it does help a little. 

It doesn’t fight back the biting cold winds whipping through the slats of the wagon or the thin canvas covering, though. The cold is still bitter and cruel, and Sypha’s concentration starts to waver. When it does, so does the ball of flames. 

“You alright?” Trevor asks, the third time the flame sputters and nearly dies.

“Tired,” Sypha admits honestly. 

“Don’t sleep,” he warns her again, giving her a warning shake with his free hand, the one not holding the cloak mostly closed.

“I know,” she says. “I know.” She needs something else to focus on, something besides the brutal cold and the screaming winds. Something to let her keep the little flame going just a tiny bit longer. Something that might keep Trevor awake, too.

“Tell me about this...Belmont Hold,” she says unexpectedly.

He frowns at her as he burrows his neck down a little further into his shoulders and furs. His teeth chatter a little when he answers. “What about? I said already. It’s big. There’s books and weird stuff.”

She sighs, exasperated. “That’s it? You  _ really  _ are terrible at this.”

“Hey,  _ I’m  _ not the one here who’s a ‘speaker,’” he mutters back, sullen. “Last I checked, that was  _ your  _ job.”

“Yes,” Sypha agrees. “And I am trying to  _ do  _ my job by learning enough from the source to tell the story, only better.”

“Why does it matter?” Trevor asks. He sounds tired, and maybe a little sad. Sypha is starting to learn that Trevor is  _ always  _ a little sad, and yet he never seems to notice, but he is especially so now.

“Because I wish to know.”

“You’ll see it yourself in a few days.” There’s a note of warning in his voice at that. Sypha hears the hidden message easily:  _ we  _ are  _ going to live through this, so don’t plan on dying now.  _

“Trevor,” Sypha says, with a note of exhaustion in her voice now. “Please. Give me something to look forward to.” She shivers against the cold. As if resonating with her thoughts and her discomfort, the flames in her palm flicker wearily, struggling to stay alight. 

Trevor, for all his frequently idiotic behavior, is not always a fool. He spots the sputtering flames, and maybe he’s smart enough to understand her own hidden message. “Alright,” he says, finally, after a long moment. “But I’m not great with words,  _ Speaker,  _ so you’ll have to forgive me if it doesn’t sound like one of your stories.”

“That is what I’m here for,” she says, with a weak smile.

He shrugs, knocking her head about a bit. “It’s...it’s big,” he tries again. “Deep. Maybe as deep as the catacombs where I found you. There’s many floors, and each one is full of books, from top to bottom. More books than any man could read in a lifetime.” He pauses, considering. “Well. You or I. The vampire could maybe pull it off. Assuming he spends the next few centuries reading, instead of brooding.”

Sypha carefully elbows him in the ribs again.

Trevor grunts. “Hey! Do you want me to talk, or not?”

“You are  _ rude,”  _ Sypha reminds him pointedly. And when he scowls at her, she adds, “Keep going.”

Despite the frigid conditions he manages to roll his eyes at her, but continues, his words slightly warped from his shivering. “There’s things down there too, besides books. Old family weapons, and weapons taken from enemies. Cabinets of monster parts and skulls of defeated dark creatures. Dangerous brews and potions we removed from witches— _ actual  _ witches, Sypha,” he interrupts himself, at her stern look, “Ones that were  _ really killing people.  _ The House of Belmont knows how to tell the damn difference between an innocent woman and the servant of a demon, and we wouldn’t have been stupid enough to burn even  _ Dracula’s _ besotted at the stake. Fucking hell. The brews were still dangerous, so we put them somewhere safe.”

“You seem more interested in the mundane weapons and trophies than in centuries’ worth of knowledge,” Sypha says, dryly amused. “Do you ever  _ read?” _ She can’t imagine a whole trove of knowledge that she would never in her lifetime not be able to fully absorb. Despite the howling winds and frigid conditions, she finds herself eager to see it, and can almost imagine herself  _ warm _ . Her eagerness gives her a little more strength, and she feeds it to the flames in her palm. 

“I told you before—I can’t read magic. The books are boring. The skeleton of a dragon is much more useful—you can see its weak points.”

“A  _ dragon?  _ An actual dragon.”

“The House of Belmont would not waste time stringing up a full  _ fake  _ skeleton of a dragon,” Trevor says, affronted. “Of course it’s real. My great great grandfather killed it, the story goes.”

“Alright then,” Sypha drawls, tired but intrigued. “Tell me the story. Tell me the stories of  _ all  _ the things you remember from the Hold.”

Trevor doesn’t know as many stories as she’d like, as it turns out. He’d been young when he’d visited the Hold, and had only been in it a few times for training. He admits he hasn’t even seen a fraction of what the Hold no doubt contains, and knows the stories of even less things.

But he shares what he does know, telling the stories of old weapons used to slay deadly beasts, the trophies of kills, the stories of particularly deadly encounters for the Belmont clan that they had somehow miraculously survived. She asks questions, and he answers where he can, and for a time she is able to hold the frightening chill at bay and maintain her little flames. 

But willpower alone cannot sustain man or woman forever. The blizzard rages and howls outside worse than ever, tearing at the wagon covering and shaking the little cart violently. Wind wiggles through even the smallest gaps, and violent cold begins to pierce through even their layers of blankets. They burrow as far down as they can into the blankets and cloak, shivering against each other. But it’s not enough to stave off the cold, or the snow kicked in through the sides of the wagon. 

Trevor’s words begin to slur, stumbling and thick. Sypha’s questions come less and less often, and feel like they’re frozen in her throat even when they do. And then her little flames flicker, and at last go out, spent.

“Sypha?” Trevor asks slowly. “You alright?”

“Tired,” she repeats, the single word slow and difficult.

“Don’t sleep,” he warns again. “Stay awake. A little longer. That bloody vampire can’t be far…”

“I know,” she murmurs. Alucard  _ has  _ been gone a long time. She wonders if he’s ever coming back. Maybe he was lost, or killed. Maybe he tired of relying on two humans and had decided to try his luck on his own. 

Maybe it doesn’t matter. She’s so tired.

“Sypha!” Trevor growls at her. He shakes her hard, and then collects her closer to him, dragging the cloak even more tightly around her. He’s shivering violently, or maybe that’s her—she can hardly tell anymore. It’s a little warmer this way, but only barely. “Sypha! I told you, stay  _ awake,  _ damn it!”

“Mm,” she agrees. She knows the stories. She knows how important it is. 

But she can’t help herself. She’d spent everything she had on the spells, and when the fire burned out, so had she. 

Her eyes slip closed, despite Trevor’s incessant shaking. His voice grows farther away as she drifts off. 

The cold doesn’t feel nearly so painful anymore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the amount of snow shown all over the place in the first two seasons, you’d think the characters would dress more warmly. And yet we have Trevor sleeping and reclining in the snow and all three of them casually sitting on snowdrifts on the way to Belmont Hold. Sypha wears sandals! I call hax. This is me doing that.
> 
> This fic is completely finished and will be fully uploaded over the course of the week.


	2. Chapter 2

Adrian dashes over the snow in his wolf form, cutting through the woods like a knife. 

The blizzard rages harder and harder about him, whipping thick flurries in his canine face and making it all but impossible to see more than a few feet in front of him at any given time. Trees and boulders are dark smudges in the landscape, and it’s difficult to distinguish open fields from dense swirls of snowflakes.

Adrian can see how it would be treacherous and lethal for any mere mortal to traverse. It would be so simple for one to be turned about, or become lost within five feet of one’s own companions. Shelter could be within a few paces, and a struggling human could walk right past it to their death without ever knowing.

Fortunately, Adrian is not fully human, and has more than a mortal’s senses to rely on. 

Nor does the cold particularly bother him. For his cousins, full-blooded vampires, things such as extreme heat and bitter cold aren’t even felt. Adrian, with human blood in his veins, knows enough to be able to recognize extreme temperatures against his skin. But it’s mere sensation at best, and nothing that could harm him. The cold is a mildly uncomfortable inconvenience, but the wind and the snow can tear at his flesh from now until the end of time, and he will never feel the biting chill that saps the life from man and beast. 

The depth of the snow  _ is  _ somewhat of a problem, but only as long as he chooses to walk as a man. Adrian is admittedly surprised at how fast the snowdrifts pile up, and how thick the blanket becomes in the short time he searches. But his wolf-shape is built for this kind of environment and flies over the top of the snow quickly, and if he needs still more speed, he can levitate.

No, the blizzard is not what inconveniences Adrian Tepes. It’s the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any damned shelter anywhere.

Adrian is aware that he has a time limit. He’d read in his mother’s and father’s books, about the effects extreme cold can have on a human body. In these conditions, the humans he travels with only have so long until they perish. They  _ must  _ have shelter, and soon. 

So he arrows through the snow in his wolf shape, plowing through raging winds and whirling vortexes of snow, ducking close to every dark smudge he sees on the horizon to investigate. Small trees—useless. A few boulders—not enough to provide shelter. An old game hunter’s cabin gives him hope for a moment, until he realizes the roof and two of the walls are almost completely caved in, and the interior is already full of snow. No good, then.

He runs, pushing himself to the greatest speeds that he can muster. And while he runs, while he searches, he has time to think.

He’s been a fool, in retrospect, although it’s as painful as a consecrated whipcrack from Belmont's weapon to admit it. 

He really  _ should  _ have listened to the hunter two hours ago, when he’d complained about the coming of a storm. Adrian is knowledgeable about many things; his intelligence and wit certainly outshines Belmont’s, a dozen times over. But conditions like this have never been a danger to him before, and thus, he’s never bothered to learn about them. 

Belmont, by his own admission, had experience with exactly what they were facing now. If Adrian had listened and begun scouting even an hour ago, he  _ might  _ have found something by the time conditions were this bad.

Now his own hubris may cost him his one chance at defeating his father. He cannot do it alone, and perhaps not without the prophesied hunter and scholar. He’d been in a rush to complete their task and be done with them, but if in his haste he has killed them both…

He shakes his lupine head in frustration. No. He will not permit it. There is too much at stake to risk either the Speaker or Belmont dying. 

He circles out in a wider loop around where he knows the wagon to be, still hunting. He can’t stray too far from their cart and horses. Even if he does find shelter, it has to be close enough that the humans can get to it safely. They will drop dead of fatigue and cold if he forces them to march miles for a place to hide.

And then, by some miracle, he finds it. A dark smudge on the horizon becomes a deep, rocky crevice in a hillside, just wide enough for a single human to fit through at a time. When Adrian wedges himself inside and shifts back to his human shape, he finds the interior more or less dry, and devoid of any animal life that might try to attack. 

It’s a fair size for him, but a little too small for three people. That can be remedied, though. Now that he has a place to start, he tears his gloves off with his teeth, extends the claws that are his birthright, and digs them deeply into the rocky cracks in the back of the hillside crevice. The stone snaps under his superior strength, and he is able to tear several chunks of boulder free, tossing them haphazardly outside into the snow. 

It takes perhaps five minutes, but when he is done he has a serviceable, if dusty and dirty, little cave in the hillside. It will be large enough for the three of them with a little space leftover for a fire and some of their things, and it will keep them dry and out of the wind and snow. 

Considering he is nearly out of time, it is the best he can hope for.

Adrian exits the cave quickly, and the wind immediately snatches at his hair and coat, trying to rip him off his feet. He sighs in exasperation, but ignores it. The wind’s strength is nothing compared to his own, and he has more pressing issues.

He gashes his own palm open with his claws, and smears the blood that drips free on one of the stones at the cave entrance, before putting his gloves back on. Vampires are designed by nature to scent blood from a long distance, in order to find their prey. Adrian can easily scent his own to find the way back. 

Now all he needs are his companions.

Melding back into his wolf-shape, he whirls in the snow and bolts in the direction of the wagon.

* * *

Adrian is disturbed to find the ring of flames has gone out when he returns.

He can see where it  _ had  _ been, as he approaches the snow-covered wagon in his wolf shape. There is a little ravine in the snow, in a perfect circle around their stopping place, where Sypha’s flame ward had clearly held the blizzard at bay for some time. But it’s already being covered over with snow, and in an hour her efforts will have been completely erased.

The horses are gone. So are their tracks in the snow, which means they’ve been missing for a while. It’s an unfortunate loss, but hardly matters. Even with the horses, the cart isn’t moving in this blizzard. Even if it was able to, it couldn’t make the trek through the woods to the shelter he’d improvised, anyway. 

But it’s when he approaches the wagon that he truly begins to worry. Under the howl of the winds he can hear the heartbeats of the two mortals that accompany him. But they’re too slow to be natural, in a way that his vampiric instincts immediately disregard as  _ not worth the hunt.  _ Too frozen, too close to death, their blood too sluggish to be worth eating. 

Adrian curses inside his head as he shifts back to his human form, and leaps up on the wagon bench to peer inside its covered confines. 

Trevor and Sypha are both there, sitting against one side of the cart and curled close against each other to try and share warmth. They’re bundled in every bedroll and blanket their little troupe has, and wrapped again in Trevor’s thick, furred cloak. Adrian can barely see the top of Sypha’s red hair beneath the furs; her face appears to be burrowed into Belmont’s shoulder. Belmont himself is hunched as far down as he can get into the furs, with only a little of his face and hair visible.

After a moment, Adrian realizes that Belmont’s eyes are fluttering, and he’s muttering something under his breath. It takes him longer still to translate the slurred, slow mumbling into actual words. “Stay ‘wake...Sypha... _ awake… _ ”

Adrian breathes in sharply through his nose. They were alive—but not for long, if he didn’t act quickly. 

“Belmont,” he says, crisp and precise, as he slips into the wagon and crouches in front of the hunter. “Wake up. I found shelter.” 

Belmont doesn’t respond immediately, and only continues to mutter. Exasperated and more than a little alarmed, Adrian reaches out to firmly tap the side of his face, prodding him into awareness. “Belmont. Up.  _ Now.” _

It truly is a testament to how weak they are that Belmont doesn’t immediately try to snap his wrist or put a sword in his gut on pure instinct. This one is no genius, but he’s no slouch when it comes to combat, either. Hunters were not known for letting the dark creatures they fought against get so close while they were so defenseless. He is definitely out of it, and that does not bode well for their situation.

But he does blink his eyes blearily when Adrian pointedly nudges his head, before saying intelligently, “You.”

“Yes. Me. I have found shelter. I can guide you, but we must hurry.” 

“How far?” Belmont asks, even as he wearily starts to move again. It’s both pathetic and alarming to see how much he struggles with his frozen limbs, and how violently he shakes from the cold. The man had enough dexterity and strength normally to command the massive bullwhip at his side, or to face Adrian reasonably enough in bladed combat. This sluggishness is disturbing by comparison.

“Five minutes, for me. Perhaps twenty, for you,” Adrian tries to estimate. 

Belmont’s eyes glitter darkly at that, but he nods. “We’ll try.” He loosens the cloak around him, and wearily shakes Sypha, burrowed into his side. “Sypha. Get up. Alucard’s back. There’s shelter.”

She doesn’t wake, not at first. Adrian can hear her too-slow heartbeat struggling, and see how much she shivers. He curses. “What happened to her?”

“I think she burned herself out, with her magic,” Belmont says, teeth chattering. He shakes her more firmly, and clumsily takes her hands in his own, rubbing them and trying to warm them up. “She’s freezing. Even more than me.”

“Hmm.” Buffoon as he is when it comes to magic, Adrian has to agree his guess is probably accurate. Humans already did not have much energy to spare in these conditions, and she had probably spent the remainder of hers maintaining a heat source. 

He wordlessly shrugs out of his black and gold overcoat, lifting Sypha effortlessly to fit her into it while Belmont continues to try and work feeling back into her frozen limbs and call her awake. Adrian hasn’t much in the way of body heat to offer her, but the coat will do her more good than him, and he doesn’t need its protection. He considers his elbow-length gloves as well, to protect her exposed hands and fingers, but they would be far too large for her and would likely not stay put for long.

Even without the gloves, their efforts seem to work. After a few minutes, Sypha’s eyes flutter wearily open, and she stares at them both blankly.

“Alucard’s back,” Belmont says, entirely unnecessarily, since Adrian is crouching right next to him. “He found shelter. We’ve got to go, Sypha. Can you walk?”

She groans, and tugs the blankets and jacket closer around her desperately, shivering. But after a moment, she nods. “I can. For a little while.”

“Good,” Adrian says. “This way. Quickly.”

The two of them are anything but  _ quick,  _ unfortunately. They’re moving, and they’re on their feet, but they lack their usual coordination and stumble like newborn fawns. Adrian has to help Sypha down out of the wagon or risk her collapsing. And while Belmont refuses the same aid, Adrian still has to catch him under one arm or risk him falling on his face in the snow. The wind buffets the two of them hard, and while Adrian barely feels the force against himself, the humans are driven back by the power of the wind and frequently stagger off balance.

_ This will not be easy,  _ he notes. He can only hope they are able to follow, and hold out until they reach the shelter he’d found.

Adrian leads the way in his wolf form, darting ahead of them towards the scent of his own blood he can smell so keenly in the distance. It’s a warm, sharp tang identifiable alongside the frozen, clean smells of the storm. He’s careful not to get too far from them; visibility is terrible, and his own white wolf furs blend into the environment too well for human eyes to discern in weather such as this.

But he finds very quickly that his original estimate is wrong. The humans aren’t capable of keeping up with even his reduced speed, and when he cycles back to check on them, he realizes why. 

Sypha is struggling. Adrian can scent blood from her feet, where her cloth-wrapped sandals slip in the thick snow. She’s leaning heavily against Belmont to try and stay upright. 

Belmont alternates between trying to shelter her in his cloak, and trying to break the deep snow in front of them with his thicker boots to make it passable. He’s faring better than she is, but not by much. And with the level of effort he makes for even a few feet of travel, his strength will wear out quickly. 

Both of them are already exhausted, and fading fast.

Adrian immediately feels foolish for not having considered this. Travel in the storm has been easy for him because of his nature. But the cold saps the strength of mortals just from existing, and they only have so much to spare. 

He changes course, sweeping back to them over the snow and taking the lead position in his human form once again. “Help each other,” he calls back to Belmont, over the raging winds. “I will deal with this.”

For once, Belmont doesn’t argue. Perhaps he sees the sense in it, or perhaps he’s simply too tired. He falls back, collecting Sypha in his cloak again, and putting an arm around her shoulders to support her. She wearily clings to his arm, all but drooping in the face of the cruel winds.

Cutting a path through the snow for them is tedious, but not difficult. For humans, Adrian supposes snow is heavy, and difficult to push through. For him, it is light and inconsequential. The work does not sap his strength, and it is child’s play to tamp the snow down enough to make it passable for his mortal companions. 

And to their credit, once he takes the work from them, they are able to keep up with the pace he sets. They huddle together against the wind and move steadily forward after him, exhausted but uncomplaining.

His estimate on travel time ends up being close after all, once he takes on the role of cutting the path. He follows the scent of his blood unerringly, weaving around trees and stones, until at last he finds the stone crevice in the hillside he had prepared and marked for them. 

“In,” he orders curtly, digging the last of the way through the snow for them and stepping aside. He doesn’t have to tell them twice. The two of them stumble wearily through and collapse to the cold, dry dirt floor, gasping for breath.

“Rest, but  _ stay awake,”  _ he warns them. “I will get firewood and be back in a few moments.”

Neither one answers, too busy catching their breaths. He can only hope they heed his advice.

Outside, there is no shortage of trees in the area. He finds a suitable dead oak and draws his sword, slicing deeply into the thick wood and shredding it into manageable chunks for a fire. It isn’t the true purpose for this blade, and feels almost disrespectful to use such a fine weapon like a hatchet. But Adrian has limited options, and no time to spare, and it does the job he needs. That will have to be enough.

The wood is easy to haul back to the little cave, and he sets the first pile in the center. Both humans are still collapsed on the dirt floor in a senseless mess, and Adrian can already hear their hearts slowing again, and see their eyes fluttering.

“No,” he tells them sharply. “You’ve come this far. You  _ will  _ live. We three have a purpose—none of us can be permitted to die until it is over.” He hauls both Belmont and Sypha upright, sitting them against the cold dirt walls. They almost immediately flop against each other, shoulder to shoulder, too worn to even keep themselves upright. “Stay  _ awake.”  _

“Fuck you,” is Belmont’s answer, but he has enough strength to glare, at least. There’s still fire in him yet. Adrian would expect nothing less of his lineage.

Sypha says nothing, but her eyelids flutter weakly, and she drags the blankets and his jacket closer around her again. She’s exhausted and in pain and shivering violently, and Adrian hates to press her, but this is vital.

“Sypha,” he says, low and gentle but firm. “I need fire.”

She frowns at him. “Don’t know if I can...tired…”

“Just one spark, Sypha,” Adrian says. “One tiny spell. That’s all I need. Give me that, and I can do the rest. You’ll be warm again. Just  _ one  _ spark.”

She takes a deep, exhausted breath, and swallows hard, her whole body shuddering. But then, wearily, she nods and raises one trembling hand, fingers already pressed together in the first steps to one of her spells.

For a moment, it seems like despite her best efforts, she has nothing left to give. Her hand trembles alarmingly, but no bead of fire energy appears, and no flames burst forth from her fingertips.

But then the tiniest little spark appears, and the tiniest tongue of flame. It only materializes for a moment, before Sypha’s hand drops wearily to her lap, but a moment is all Adrian needs. Quick as a flash, he brings some of the dry tinder to the magical flame, and it instantly sets alight. Working quickly, he turns the little flame into a roaring blaze, setting the first stack of wood he’d collected alight.

The humans sag, but he can hear their sighs of relief as the warmth washes over them. And for the first time, Adrian thinks that maybe they have a chance. 

“I will collect more wood to keep this burning,” he tells them. “ _ Do not  _ go to sleep. I did not hear or smell any predators in the area, but call my name should you need assistance.” He’d expect both of them to be able to handle themselves against wild animals normally, but weakened as they are, he doubts they could defend themselves now if it came to it. 

Belmont grunts in answer. He’s clearly not happy about requiring protection from Adrian. But with his frozen limbs, there’s no way he could wield a whip or shortsword, and he knows it. Sypha says nothing at all, and that is a lot more concerning. 

Warmth. They need warmth. And maybe treatment and food, afterwards, depending on how bad off they are, but warmth most of all, first.

He disappears back into the storm, and makes several more trips from the old, dead oak to their minimal shelter, slicing more logs and hauling them back. He builds up the fire even further, trying to turn their little shelter into an oven, enough that even he can feel the heat on his own skin. When that’s taken care of, he piles still more wood at the entrance, in tall, deep stacks. It will serve as a windbreak and further protection from the elements, but fuel is still readily available if he needs to add more to the fire.

By the time he’s done, at least half an hour has passed. It’s hard to tell in the thick of the storm, but he can feel with his vampiric senses that night is approaching, and he’s glad he finished in time. He doubts the night hordes could attack in a blizzard as thick as this, but it would undoubtedly get colder, and if his companions had been out there too much longer…

He doesn’t care to think of the results.

He takes the time to do one brief circuit of the area, just in case, for any potential threats. Unsurprisingly, he finds nothing, not a bird or a bear or a rabid, foul hellbeast. Anything natural was smart enough to go to ground, and anything unnatural could find easier pickings in more southern cities and settlements. 

With the situation as safe as he can possibly make it, he finally returns to the shelter to check in on his companions.

To his irritation, both seem to be asleep again, still huddled together where he had left them last. The heat must have helped, to some degree, but they’ve already lost so much strength from the biting cold and the frigid winds, it still might be too late. Their hearts are still too slow, and they’re still too unaware.

They are also poorly situated, now that the flames are built up higher. The back of the little cave would be the warmest, and farthest away from any stray gusts of wind or melting snow, but both had collapsed near the entrance. With an exasperated sigh, Adrian leans forward and gently pries the two apart to move them.

Belmont must not be so far gone as last time, because this time he  _ does  _ attempt to attack Adrian reflexively on contact. It’s a weak, fumbling attempt with one of the knives strung across his chest, laughable compared to his usual level of skill. Adrian flicks it aside easily, but at least an attempt had been made.

“It’s me,” Adrian says curtly. 

Belmont glares at him blearily. “Come to take a bite while I’m down?” he slurs, through a thick, uncoordinated tongue. 

Adrian rolls his eyes. “Belmont, even if I was interested in feeding off either of you, which I am not _,_ I can’t imagine you’d make much of a meal. You’re far too frozen for that.” 

Belmont narrows his eyes at him, but does not appear to have the brainpower at the moment to figure out if this is an insult or not. Not that he ever had the brainpower to begin with.

Adrian sighs. He is far too tired for this, somehow, even though he has not exerted himself terribly in this ordeal. “I’m moving her,” he says, quieter now. “The back will be warmer. You should come as well. You’ll be more comfortable, and you can take off some of your wet things, which will help.” 

Belmont frowns at him, but after a moment he nods. Permission granted—as if he needed it—Adrian lifts Sypha gently and moves her a few paces to the back of the cave. It is indeed warmer back here, and the ground has already begun to absorb some of the heat of the flames, presumably making it more comfortable. 

He sets her down carefully, and gently eases her out of his now soaked overcoat, sodden blankets, and snow-damp outer Speaker’s cloak. Her lighter Speaker’s robes underneath are mostly dry, but the cloth wrappings around her feet are soaked through, and stained red. He can smell the blood easily. He sighs as he begins to unwrap them.

A stumbling thud behind him announces Belmont’s arrival to the back of the cave. Adrian glances briefly over his shoulder as he works. The hunter has shed his own damp blankets and left them by the fire, along with his fur-lined cloak and the red cloth he keeps belted about his waist. He’s also removed his boots and thick weapons belt, after setting the whip safely aside away from the elements, leaving him in his shirt, trousers and odd Belmont bandolier. 

“Hate those stupid sandals,” he mutters, watching Adrian work, and leaning heavily against the cave wall for balance. His voice is still low and mumbling, the words sluggish and indistinct. He’s shaking so badly Adrian is genuinely impressed he’s managed to stand this long, even with the help of the wall. “Speakers don’t know how to dress for fucking winter. Maybe I can find her some boots at the house.”

Adrian hums noncommittally as he finishes unwrapping the soggy cloth sacking from Sypha’s feet, and then carefully strips off the sandals as well. Her feet are icy to the touch, but they don’t have the hardness or paleness described in his mother’s medical books associated with frostbite. They do still bleed, a little, so he shreds one of the dryer blankets into pieces to re-bandage them carefully. He wishes he had some of his mother’s medicines for proper treatment, but for now, this will have to do. 

Sypha doesn’t wake once during the whole procedure. Adrian hopes, with more than a little growing desperation, that it’s merely from exhaustion, and not from escaping the blizzard too late.

Trevor seems to realize the seriousness of the situation, to judge from his frown. But there’s not much he can do about it, not frozen himself as he is. He wearily stretches out next to Sypha, curled with his back against her, trembling violently from the cold. Without warmer blankets to share and barely any body heat of his own, at this point, there’s little else he can do for himself or for her. 

Adrian sighs and leaves them to it, removing the bloodied cloth sacking and wet blankets. He tosses the former outside, cleaning his hands off with cool, fresh snow, and spreads the rest of the blankets near the fire to dry.

And then there is nothing else he can do but keep vigil, and wait.

Adrian dislikes waiting. His vampire cousins can spend hours in perfect stillness and wait years for exactly the right moment to strike. Even his own father had delayed his vengeance for a year, to perfect his plans and make his revenge that much more widespread and all-encompassing. Time means nothing to an immortal, after all. 

Adrian has always found it a failing of his human side, the curse of impatience, the inability to sit and wait indefinitely. His mother had always said he was too impatient to even grow like a normal human boy; he’d wanted so badly to be big and strong and intelligent like his father he’d rushed right past childhood. He’d been disturbed to discover he’d slept away an entire year, when the Speaker and Belmont found him beneath Gresit. It had not been his intention to waste so much time, not when he had hoped to stop his father’s hordes of the night before they were even released. 

He wishes to _act,_ to be productive, to learn. He always has. But he cannot act in this. 

All he can do is monitor his companions’ health. Listen to their rasping, struggling breaths and their sluggish, tired heartbeats and the click of their teeth as they shiver in their sleep. 

All he can do is think about what might happen should they die.

Unlike most of his vampiric cousins, he has never born humans ill will, or considered them merely livestock. He has always appreciated the things that humans so readily brought into this world: art, laughter, community, and sometimes even kindness. Perhaps that is the human half of him, or perhaps it is his mother’s teachings. He has never truly been sure. 

But while he respects their strengths, there is no denying that humans are so incredibly, frighteningly  _ fragile.  _ They are but lambs to the slaughter in the face of the night hordes; they are so easily controlled by fear. Even the Belmont clan, raised as they are to fight the things that lurk in the night, shatter just as easily as any other human when the right pressure is applied. Mortals are weak, and breakable, and the life can be snuffed out of them with the simplest things, from pain to illness to cold.

It is... _ inconvenient,  _ to have to rely on mortals to achieve victory against his father. But this is not something he can do alone, and these are the only two who have a chance to make that victory a reality. 

And perhaps, even deeper still, he is...uncomfortable with the thought of them dying. 

He does not think they are  _ friends,  _ exactly. But...they had been kind, and they needn’t have been. Sypha had been gracious and polite, witty and clever. She had done what she could to understand him and had asked his stories of him, a high compliment from a Speaker. Belmont was an ass, but it said more than enough that he hadn’t tried to stake Adrian again after their battle. That was a decision not made lightly by anyone from  _ that  _ warrior dynasty. 

No, they weren’t friends. But he was learning to respect them, and perhaps he would be...upset...if they died. 

But no. That could not happen here. They could  _ not  _ die here. Not yet. 

He keeps vigil over them attentively, watching and listening, but it isn’t enough. Their heartbeats and their breaths still struggle, with no signs of improvement. Their shivering stops, but when he ghosts forward and gently brushes at their hands with his ungloved fingertips, both are still cool to the touch. Neither one reacts to his hand at all. Both are too far gone to be aware.

That is not a good sign, he knows from browsing through his mother’s old books. Shivering was a sign the body was struggling to keep warm; if it stopped it meant the body was beginning to give up. Adrian has found them some semblance of warmth, but perhaps too late to make a difference. They are out of the wind, and the fire makes things warmer than outside. But they are still sheltering in a cold stone cairn, and neither of his companions are built for such a thing. It may have been too much of a shock for their weakened bodies to handle.

He mentally flicks through the pages of his mother’s books, trying to remember other forms of treatment. Warm drinks and warm blankets, primarily, but of course he has neither. The blankets, his coat, and Belmont’s cloak are still soaked and drying out by the fires, and covering them in those would only make them worse. He can’t even warm them with his own body heat—he barely has any, because of his vampiric nature, and not enough to make any difference. 

But he must find  _ something.  _ Sypha’s thin Speaker robes and Belmont’s shirt and trousers aren’t enough to help, clearly.

He eyes Belmont’s drying cloak thoughtfully, and the thick furs that line the collar and shoulders. Perhaps he could hunt down a wolf or bear for their furs to keep the two warm. It would be messy, but they might live. 

Except, while it would be easy to kill and skin one of the animals if he came across one, it would be finding one in the first place that would be difficult. He hadn’t seen any animals while searching or patrolling. He doubts either of the humans have the time for him to track one to its den and haul it back. 

And then again...perhaps the wolf needn’t be dead, first. If furs are all that are needed, he has his own, even if it doesn’t come with personal warmth. 

Adrian sighs. “You two are needed alive,” he says. “So I will do what I must. But when you awaken I expect you to hold your tongues. I will not suffer mockery for this.” 

Neither one answers, but somehow he does not expect them to hold their silence. It is unfortunate indeed that having them alive also means listening to their sharp tongues and terrible humor.

No time to waste, then. Adrian stacks more wood on the fire, as much as he possibly can in the small environment without smoking them out, so it will last a while without his care. Then he melds once more into his wolf-shape. His white fur gleams red and orange in the flames, and is already clean and dry once again. 

It will do.

He paces around the two humans and noses them as closely together as possible. Neither one reacts to him anymore, deeply frozen and deeply exhausted. At least it will mean little resistance.

His mother’s texts suggested that the core body must be warmed first, before the extremities, or the afflicted had the potential to go into a deep and deadly shock. With a soft  _ wuff  _ of irritation, Adrian steps over the two in his wolf shape and carefully settles down across them, splayed perpendicular over their chests and stomachs to warm the two of them as much as possible. 

It is awkward and uncomfortable. His wolf form is much larger than the average living wolf’s, But still not quite large enough to adequately shelter two humans. He is still quite heavy, though, and it takes some careful readjustment to keep from inadvertently crushing Sypha with his front half or gouging her with his claws by accident. He is at least able to brace most of his back weight on his hind legs, to keep from suffocating Belmont. The effort is somewhat mitigated by the fact that he has to adjust his hips to do so, which leaves his thick wolf’s tail smack in the hunter’s face. 

The humans have their own unconscious revenge. One of Sypha’s shoulders juts uncomfortably into his ribs. And he is fairly certain at least two of the knives strapped to Belmont’s chest are digging into his stomach, though thankfully this time they are at least sheathed. Blessedly, neither protest. Neither one wakes either, or even stirs at the movement, which is simultaneously a relief and deeply troubling.

This will not be a pleasant evening.

But Adrian can feel the chill in his companions, and this is the very last thing he can offer. If they don’t survive now, after every attempt he has made, then they never will. At least he has done everything he ever could.

_ You must survive,  _ he wills the two.  _ My father cannot be defeated without you.  _

Settling his lupine head down on his outstretched, carefully placed front paws, Adrian stares into the fire, and waits for morning to come.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the swear-iest, because _Trevor,_ just as a head's up.

The first thing Trevor Belmont notices, as he starts to wake, is that his head is pounding.

It’s not an unfamiliar feeling, but at least it usually follows a night of getting absolutely shitfaced. He can’t remember the prior evening, and that’s not all that unusual either. But something tells him the reason he can’t isn’t because of a wild night of mediocre beer and a bar fight too many. 

That’s a fucking shame, really. If he has to suffer this much, he should have at least enjoyed some decent fucking payoff earlier. 

The pounding in his head extends, after a moment, to the rest of him. There’s a prickling, itching, throbbing pain that extends all the way to his fingertips and his toes, and yet every part of him feels stiff and languid, too heavy to move. Well, mostly too heavy to move—it takes him a moment to realize he’s overcome with a fine shivering, too.

 _Definitely_ not the drink, then. He’s passed out in all manner of unflattering positions before, after a heavy night at the taverns, but that feels different. Uncoordinated, stumbling, and too loose-limbed after too much booze is exactly what he’d expect; this is the opposite, cold and rigid and heavy. Even breathing is a chore, like his lungs have to struggle against a great weight just to take in a little air.

No, Trevor realizes. That’s not just him. There really _is_ a great weight he’s struggling against just to breathe. Something is pinning him to a hard surface, slung over his chest. 

That sets a fire alight in Trevor’s brain. He can be careless, and reckless, and not take things seriously like he should. The number of times he’d been slung out of a shitty village watering hole into a ditch, didn’t notice until the next day when he woke up, and hadn’t even bothered to give a shit about it, were staggeringly high. His parents would have taken his ear off about lowering his defenses so much he could put himself in such compromising positions, but Trevor had never cared before. If he lived, he’d move on to eat and get drunk again and do it all over. If he died, it wasn’t as if anyone would give a fuck anyway. 

But waking up with a hangover in the gutter is one thing. This is something else, and he’s fairly certain he can agree with his family on principle that waking up, in pain, unable to move, and strapped down to a surface is definitely a _bad thing._

He shoves against whatever’s holding him down, but his prickling, leaden arms refuse to move, and his aching, throbbing fingers do little more than twitch uselessly. He tries to lift himself against the heavy weight, but it proves as immobile and stubbornly resistant atop him. 

He grits his teeth in a grimace of both pain and weary anger, and cracks his eyes open.

He’s not sure what he expects. Dracula’s castle, maybe. The damn bastard could have found him, the last son of the Belmont family, and he’s to be tormented for his family’s ancient opposition to the monster. Maybe the church, ready to punish him for the false accusations of dealing with demons and black magic. 

What he sees is dirt.

Well, dirt, and roots, and rocks, all suspended over his head several feet away. He blinks to clear his bleary vision. The dirt remains the same. Great.

The heavy weight is becoming uncomfortable now, and it really is becoming a struggle to get the air he needs now that he’s thinking about it. He turns his head to try and find the source of whatever is tying him down, and is met with a faceful of white, fluffy furs, which promptly get in his mouth and nose. He coughs (a painful experience, with the weight on his chest), spits it out, twists his head away, and comes face to face with a staring wolf.

He freezes. For just a moment. Wolves are natural hunters in the wild, and the Belmonts have always respected them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of ripping your damn throat out with their teeth, and they’ll do it, too, if they’re hungry or protecting what’s theirs. A large enough pack would even take on demons, if they were desperate enough, and win at least some of the time. It doesn’t pay to piss off wolves. 

The wolf doesn’t immediately go for his throat. In the silence that follows, Trevor’s slow mind is able to put together a few other observations. Like the fact that the wolf is actually twisting to look at him over its large, furry shoulder, because it appears to be stretched out over his chest and stomach, as well as...Sypha’s? Sypha, who’s laid out on her back next to Trevor, eyes closed and breathing deeply in sleep, her shoulder pressed to his. With a wolf taking a bloody nap on top of her. 

At least that explained the weight on his chest. There was a fucking wolf on it. 

It’s not an unfamiliar feeling, now that he thinks about it. His family dog used to do the same thing, when Trevor was younger. The enormous Belmont mastiffs were bred big enough to hunt and savage demons, but Fleur had always been the sweetest, happiest thing when not hunting hellbeasts. She’d been his very own since she was a pup to raise and train for hunting, a gift from his parents, and she was good at it, too. But after training she’d leap onto his bed every night, and pin him with her adoration and affection and not inconsiderable weight, and snuggle close until they both dozed off to sleep. 

That sends a pang of regret through him. He hadn’t thought about that old animal in years. He’d loved that dog. But she’d burned with the rest of the house, valiantly trying to protect her masters to the last, along with the other animals. 

Trevor swallows before letting those memories fester too much—dead, gone, no point reliving them—and scowls at the wolf. The creature is uncanny. He’s seen white wolves before, but not often, and this one doesn’t have a shred of other color to it. And its eyes are an unnatural gold—not the tarnished amber of most wolves, but the pale, brilliant gold of a new coin. 

A color he’s seen elsewhere before.

“Better not be an _actual_ fucking wolf about to eat me,” he growls. His voice his hoarse and slurred, his tongue a little too thick in his mouth. But at least his face is listening to him, unlike the rest of his body. “Because I am not in the mood to deal with that.”

He swears the wolf manages to give him a disdainful, superior look. It most certainly turns its nose up at him. If there was ever any doubt on the identity of the creature, there certainly isn’t now. 

“Alucard,” Trevor snaps. Or tries to, anyway; he chatters the name more than says it menacingly. It’s menacing for how he currently feels. “What in the hell are you doing?” 

He tries to shove the wolf off again. He’s marginally more successful, in that his fingers twitch more than they did before, and he lifts his shivering arms a whole half an inch. But pinned as they are beneath the wolf’s weight, he doesn’t get much farther than that. And the wolf is as rock solidly immobile as a damned mountain; not even his fur moves a hair out of place.

The wolf gives him a very pointed look. He can’t speak, in that form, but Trevor can all but hear the smug bastard’s voice anyway, dripping with condescension. _And now what, Belmont? What_ exactly _was your plan?_

“Get off already,” Trevor chatters at him again. “Mangy mutt with fangs. Stop sitting on me, a man can’t breathe with a flea-ridden mongrel on his chest.” He can’t exactly move Alucard—how the hell did he get so _weak?—_ but he makes an attempt anyway, thrashing feebly and generally making a nuisance of himself.

The wolf watches him struggle for a minute with what definitely _feels_ like lazy amusement. No wolf has any right to wear a face that fucking smug, or to weigh as much as a damn building. If even this little bit of struggling weren’t making him so tired, Trevor would love to punch that stupid wolf in the stupid face.

But eventually the wolf’s ears prick up, listening attentively, and it finally moves. With a surprising amount of grace, the animal lifts itself off of both Trevor and Sypha, moving delicately enough that it doesn’t dig any elbows, paws or claws into either of them. Trevor gasps greedily for air as the weight is finally removed from his chest, and he can take his first deep breath since he’s woken. 

Then he gasps again when one back wolf foot plants itself in his stomach, winding him, as the creature steps over him. The wolf slinks towards the front of the cave as Trevor weakly clutches at his stomach, sides heaving for air. He can’t help but notice that the bloody bastard didn’t stir so much as one hair on Sypha’s head while making his exit. 

Well, fuck _him,_ then.

“The hell was that for?” Trevor wheezes finally, after several long moments of gasping for breath. _“All_ of it?”

The wolf melds seamlessly back into the humanoid shape of Alucard, minus his heavy black overcoat. The vampire reaches towards the stack of wood by the entrance to the small cave they’re apparently in, snatches a few logs, and settles them upon the fire. The rush of warmth that cascades outward as the fire is stirred is heavenly. 

“Saving your life, of course,” Alucard answers after a moment, in his usual superior tone. “I didn’t realize it was such an offensive thing.”

“Saving my life?” Trevor scowls at him. “More like suffocating me to death.” 

He tries to sit up. It takes him three attempts, his limbs are so shaky and uncoordinated. They still throb terribly, and an awful pins and needles sensation fills most of his extremities. His shivering increases, and he still feels cold, even with the fire. It takes everything he has to not rub his arms in an attempt to warm himself, but he refuses to look weaker than he already is in front of that bastard.

“Yes,” Alucard drawls. “I, Adrian Tepes, son of Dracula, determined the most _efficient_ way to kill you would be to sit on you as a wolf, rather than any other means at my disposal. Listen to yourself talk, Belmont. It’s ridiculous.” 

Trevor glares at him. “I get why you _wouldn’t_ show off your mongrel form. Had I known you could do that, I might have decided to gut you and flay you after all, for some nice fur-lined boots instead of shoes. Could do with a new pair.”

Alucard gives him a baleful look for a moment, before turning his attention back to the fire. “I shall let that pass, this time, considering your condition,” he says, after a long moment.

“My _condition?”_ As if timed perfectly, he’s wracked by another bout of shivering, and a number of sharp stabbing sensations ripple through his limbs. He groans. 

A howl of wind sounds from outside, and just like that, it all comes rushing back to him. The storm that had come on so fast. Sypha’s battle against the blizzard to keep them warm, until she’d finally succumbed. Alucard leading them through thick drifts of snow to shelter. Fire. Tearing off his wet things before they killed him. Cold. Cold. _Cold._

He turns his attention to Sypha. She’s laid out by the fire asleep, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. She doesn’t react when he nudges her shoulder with a shivering hand, or pokes her in the side of the head. But when he puts the back of his struggling hand to her cheek, he feels...well, not _warmth,_ exactly, she’s still colder than she should be. But she’s not chilled to the bone, like before, and he can feel her shivering finely too. 

He sighs in relief, and drops his hand to his side. Even that little exertion had tired him.

“I think you will both be fine now,” Alucard says. He’d watched the whole thing quietly from beside the fire, but now he speaks up, his voice serious. “Your hearts are stronger than before.”

“Damned wrong that you can do that,” Trevor grouses. 

Alucard ignores him. “I was concerned, when night fell. The two of you were quite chilled. Anything I could use to warm you was soaked through, and the fire wasn’t enough. I was required to improvise.” 

“By turning into a mutt and snuggling,” Trevor finishes. Though, admittedly, it hadn’t been a terrible idea—not that he would ever admit it to Alucard, even by his dying breaths. 

By all rights, he should have died. Storms like that killed, and did so indiscriminately. You could fight monsters—you could never fight nature.

“My furs in my wolf-shape are no different than the ones sewn into your cloak. It seemed worth at least trying.”

“Except the furs on my cloak aren’t made of fucking vampires.”

“You _did_ seem keen to turn me into a pair of shoes,” Alucard remarks dryly. 

“The shoes would have been dead. The vampire wolf suffocated me.”

“A simple ‘thank you’ would suffice, Belmont. Or did your family spend so much time teaching you to kill they forgot to teach you manners?” 

Trevor scowls at him, and skirts around the question “What time is it, anyway?”

“Past midnight,” Alucard answers, testing the blankets and cloak for dampness. “Not yet dawn. The storm still rages—it is difficult to estimate further than that.”

Trevor can hear the screaming winds outside; they must be in the thick of it now. The shelter Alucard had found was adequate, though. It isn’t cozy, but it is deep enough to be out of the worst of the winds, and retained heat from the fire well. There’s enough room for the three of them, with a little leftover room for their wet things, spread out on the dirt floor near the fire to dry. The exit is only wide enough for perhaps one man at a time, and the stack of firewood has been built up around it to break the wind and keep the snow from drifting inward. 

“Don’t let the snow pile up enough to seal the exit and suffocate us,” Trevor says. “This much snow, winds like that...there’s a chance.”

Alucard regards him for a long moment, before saying with a surprisingly neutral tone, “Of course. I shall keep watch for that.”

It’s almost too agreeable. Trevor’s not sure what to make of it, so he merely gives a grunt of acknowledgement as he surveys his weakened hands. The feeling is starting to return to them—or at least, feelings beyond ‘stabbing pain’ and ‘throbbing pain’—and if he concentrates, he can flex them a little faster than before. His whole body is still wracked by shivering, though, and all of his muscles still feel stiff and uncoordinated, like they haven’t had a chance to thaw yet.

Damned blizzard. He’s fought fucking vampires, and _this_ is what the cold reduces him to. He’s more coordinated when he’s blackout fucking drunk. At least then he can _move,_ wobbly though it is. 

Doesn’t feel like he’ll lose anything, though. The pain and the weakness is miserable, but the fact that he can feel pain and weakness at all is a sign that his fingers and toes, hands and feet, are still his. Could be worse.

“I am sorry.”

Trevor blinks. Glances up, across the fire, and stares blankly at Alucard. “What?”

Alucard looks like he’s bitten his tongue with his own ugly fangs, but repeats himself. “I am sorry. For not taking action when you first gave us warning.”

Trevor’s blank stare continues for a moment. But then he abruptly breaks into a smug smile. “Took you a lot of stones to say that, huh?”

“More than you realize,” Alucard says, with an icy look, “But unlike some of us, I _was_ trained in proper manners.” 

Trevor glares at him. Almost immediately, Alucard closes his eyes and takes a deep, steadying breath, before saying curtly, “That was...uncalled for. My point is that I disregarded your warning about the storm, despite your expertise, while I had none. It nearly cost you two your lives, and all three of us the opportunity to defeat my father. I will not make that mistake again.”

Trevor watches him suspiciously. “Oh? So the Savior of Gresit admits he doesn’t know everything? That he’s willing to listen to a _Belmont_ for once?”

Alucard looks like he’s trying very hard not to snap out a condescending retort, or another jab to piss Trevor off. It takes him a moment, but he eventually says, “In matters where you are an expert, I am willing to consider your input.” 

A pause, and he adds more softly, “I suppose that is the nature of the prophecy to begin with. None can stand alone. None know all. Only when we three combine our skills and our knowledge will we ever have the chance to defeat my father.”

Trevor’s not so sure he believes in this stupid prophecy even now, no matter how seriously Sypha and Alucard take it. But even if it doesn’t come from the same place, he has to agree with the sentiment. None of them are equipped to handle Dracula alone. His family had tried for hundreds of years, to no avail. If he is to be defeated, it will only be with weapons no Belmont before him ever would have considered: a stubborn Speaker-Magician, and the only damned vampire in the world to take pity on humans. 

“Fine, then,” Trevor says, after a moment. “I’ll take it.”

Alucard _hmms_ in agreement. Then he says, “You should rest more. Sleep is no longer a danger, but it will help you recover. You are exhausted, and still chilled.”

“Don’t tell me what I am,” Trevor grumbles. But his body picks exactly the wrong moment to shiver uncontrollably again, and his teeth chatter a little despite himself. “Fuck.”

Alucard doesn’t even have the grace to pretend to ignore that, just raises an eyebrow and gives Trevor a pointed look. Trevor gives him the finger in return, and is very proud of himself for managing such a coordinated effort despite his prickling, throbbing hands. 

“Very adult of you,” Alucard says dryly. “Two of the blankets are reasonably dry, if you would like them.”

“Give’em to Sypha,” Trevor says. “Don’t need ‘em. Slept outside under the trees in the snow, I don’t need coddling—”

The first of the blankets hits him hard in the face, and he sputters as he drags it off of his head and into his lap.

“It’s either the blanket, and you rest of your own accord,” Alucard says cooly, “Or the vampire wolf that isn’t a pair of fur-lined boots sits on you again to enforce your recovery. I will listen to you in matters of surviving and hunting, Belmont, but in matters of medicine, I am by far your superior. I have fought too hard to keep the two of you alive. I will _not_ lose my opportunity to defeat my father and stop his madness because _you_ are a stubborn child.”

Trevor glares at him, but Alucard is equal to that, and stares back firmly. His eyes might be golden, but they’re chips of ice for all the coldness that’s in them now, enough to rival even the blizzard outside. 

“Fine,” Trevor scowls. Truth be told, he really is exhausted; his limbs still feel weak and heavy, and he can’t stop shivering. He’s loathe to admit it to Alucard, but then, the bastard can probably already hear it from the inside. Fucking vampires. 

He tosses the first blanket over Sypha, still dead to the world, and accepts the second from Alucard. It’s still damp in some places, but passably dry, and warm from its place by the fire. Trevor wraps up in it, and wearily lays down again, this time on his side with his back to Alucard. 

He can already feel his mind drifting back into slumber, his thoughts hazy and indistinct. Perhaps that’s why he speaks, half slurring again as he drifts towards dreams once more.

“Alucard.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Shut up. You did alright.”

“Hmm?”

“With the storm,” Trevor clarifies with a yawn. “You messed up at first. But you did alright at the end. Best any man can hope for.”

“I...see.” A very long pause, punctuated only by the crackles and pops of the fire, and the roaring winds outside. Then, “You are certainly full of surprises, Belmont.”

“Better fucking believe it,” he mutters into his blanket. He’s asleep before he hears if there’s an answer.

* * *

When Trevor wakes again, it’s to the sound of two voices chatting. 

They’re speaking quietly, maybe to try to avoid disturbing him. It’s a small cave, though, and when he’s not blackout drunk, he’s always been a bit of a light sleeper. It’s a hard habit to break, when you trained to fight dark things and regularly sleep under trees where said dark things like to crawl about. 

He stays still for a little while, listening, but it’s nothing new to him. Alucard quietly explains how he’d managed to rescue them, and Sypha gives him the details on what happened at their wagon after he’d left them to search for shelter. 

Trevor has nothing to add to either story, nor does he particularly care to. So he stays silent, on his side with his back to them, listening while he assesses his own condition. The pins and needles feeling in all his limbs is mostly gone, and his muscles don’t feel quite so much like they’re made of metal. He still shivers occasionally, but not nearly so violently as he had the first time. He feels weak, and he probably won’t be fighting demons for a few days, but he doesn’t feel frozen solid anymore. 

The talk quiets, and Alucard finally says, “Enough play-acting, Belmont. I know you’ve been awake for some time. I can hear it in your breaths and your heartbeat.”

“S’wrong that you can do that,” Trevor snaps at him, as he finally rolls over and wearily sits up again, tossing the blanket around his shoulders.

“You said that before.”

“It’s worth saying again.”

“I can’t very well not hear you, any more than you have the ability to _not_ be a complete ass.”

“You’re a c—”

 _“Enough!”_ Sypha shouts, and both of them fall silent. “I do not want to _hear_ it from you two,” she adds, glaring at both of them. “In the wagon was bad enough. But we are stuck together in a tiny hole for however long this storm lasts, and I do not want to be trapped here with you two _bickering_ all the time.”

Trevor glares sullenly at Alucard, who glares right back. After a moment, he turns away from the vampire and says, “Well, if you’re shouting at us, you must be feeling better.”

“You are _rude,”_ Sypha says, exasperated. But after a moment she sags in place where she is sitting, dragging her own warm blanket a little closer around herself, and adds more softly, “But yes. I am better. Mostly.” 

“Mostly?”

“If I know your ailments, perhaps I can assist,” Alucard offers. “I am not the doctor my mother was, but I grew up reading her books, and she always answered my questions.”

Sypha shakes her head. “Tired, mostly. Cold. My feet hurt, but I am sure that will pass with time.” 

“You’re lucky you didn’t lose them,” Trevor grumbles. To his surprise, Alucard actually nods in agreement.

“I am aware,” Sypha says. “Thank you for your help with that.” 

Trevor merely shrugs.

“There’s not much that can be done without medications, but if the injuries are kept clean and bandaged, they should recover,” Alucard says. “The snow can be melted for water to clean them with, if need be.”

“Assuming we had anything to melt it in,” Trevor says. “All our kit’s back at the wagon, and the storm’s _still_ going.” The wind is howling as fiercely as ever outside. The wagon is probably half buried by now. 

“And our food,” Sypha adds, with a hand to her stomach, and Trevor can hear it gurgling from here. As if right on time, Trevor’s own stomach rumbles, reminding him he’s done quite a lot of work without anything to eat. 

Alucard sighs. If Trevor could hear the rumbling stomachs, there’s no way the vampire missed it. “If you two are comfortable alone, I can return to the wagon to retrieve some supplies. The journey is not difficult for me, even with additional materials.”

Trevor is aware that Alucard is their only real defense at the moment. He and Sypha are too worn out to fight, and even if they were able, the cave isn’t suitable for either of their skillsets. It’s too small for his whip, and Alucard had broken his shortsword back at Gresit. Sypha was more liable to set them on fire than the enemy, at this range, even if she could cast. If something were to attack, they’d be defenseless, with only the throwing knives on his bandolier as a last resort. 

But he’s also aware that there’s unlikely to even be an attack, in weather such as this. Bears and wolves will have holed up somewhere safe to wait out the storm. Even demons would try their luck in southern cities, where the people were soft and easy pickings, and they didn’t have to fight nature to wreak havoc. A blizzard could kill some demons as well as a man. 

“Go ahead,” he says. “We’re not going anywhere. Obviously.”

“Thank you, Alucard,” Sypha says. 

He merely nods, setting a few more logs on the fire prior to departing. “I believe it is a few hours past sunrise,” he says. “I shall endeavor to be back as soon as possible.” And without further waiting, he ducks out of the narrow entrance and disappears into the howling winds outside. 

For a moment, it’s silent, other than the crackling fire and the shrieks of the blizzard. Then Sypha sighs, and sinks back further until she’s leaning against one dirty side of the cave wall.

“You all right?” Trevor asks. 

“Tired,” is her only answer.

He shrugs at her awkwardly. They’re both tired. Not much either of them can do about that, other than sleep more. As for himself, he’s got other more important things to deal with.

He levers himself to his own feet to move, with the blanket still draped around his shoulders. He’s a little unsteady, but his legs remember how to walk after a moment, and he shuffles carefully around the fire in their limited space. The bedrolls and his cloak are dry now, and his thick, heavy cloak is nearly there, as is Alucard’s pompous black and gold jacket. 

Against the wall he finds the rest of his gear. His boots are dry, he determines after an experimental feel, and he eagerly pulls them back on. The dirt floor of the cave wasn’t frigid anymore, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable. His red waistcloth and thick weapons belt are also there, and he straps them both back on, already starting to feel like himself again. 

Last is his family’s whip, which he takes back to his resting spot and spools out carefully in his lap. He surveys every inch of it from beginning to end, searching for any sign of damage. Extreme weather can do nasty things to leather, even consecrated leather, and it pays to ensure your weapons are in top condition.

He reaches into one of the pouches at the small of his back, for the leather oil he uses to keep the whip supple. As he does, he glances up and notes Sypha is nearly asleep sitting up, head nodding towards her chest over and over. “If you’re that tired, rest,” he says, as he sets into the repetitive, careful task of caring for his weaponry. 

“We should remain vigilant, to be safe,” Sypha says, although the weariness in even her voice is obvious.

“If anything’s got enough stones to make it through that storm to come after us, we’ll be eaten anyway,” Trevor says, as he works the oil into the leather. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

“You are as skilled at this as ever, I see,” Sypha notes, with a little wryness seeping through her fatigue.

Trevor merely grunts in response.

But five minutes later she still looks damned terrible, so he finally looks up from his weapons care and breaks the silence again. “I didn’t think it’d take this much out of you.”

“The storm?” Sypha says, incredulous.

“The magic,” Trevor corrects, feeling unusually solemn. “I wouldn’t have ordered you to hold those spells for that long if I knew you’d burn yourself out.” 

“You did not _order_ me to do anything,” Sypha says. “You said I should hold the flame ring for as long as I could—”

“Which is an order—”

“— _which is an assessment I agreed with,”_ Sypha finishes, speaking over him. “I did not do it because you _told_ me to, I did it because you as the expert with these storms suggested it, and I wanted to stay alive.”

“By almost weakening yourself to the point of dying,” Trevor says, confused. “In a blizzard.”

“In my defense, I thought Alucard would return much faster than he did,” Sypha says. “I did not realize shelter would be so difficult to find.” She tugs the blanket around her wearily, but her gaze is firm when she meets his eyes. “This was not my undoing. I will recover my strength and my energy, once I have rested and eaten. And I will be able to use my magic once more.” 

Trevor regards her critically for a moment. She really hadn’t been doing well in the blizzard, especially when Alucard had finally come to collect them. The cold and the wind and the snow already stole a man’s life and energy away when traveling in a storm. But Sypha had already spent most of hers, keeping the two of them alive with her magic before they’d even begun moving. 

She’d been so weak, while stumbling from the wagon to the cave Alucard had found. Trevor had been all but carrying her at the end, with what little strength he had left of his own. Even with Alucard’s assistance breaking the snow, she’d barely been able to move. For one moment, he’d been certain she would die. Alucard had clearly thought the same, and that was even more frightening. 

But she didn’t look near death now. Hungry, yes. Tired and cold, certainly. Wounded, absolutely. But not dying. And that, at least, is a relief. 

She stares back at him, and he shrugs. “Well, if it makes you feel better,” he says, as he returns to caring for his weapon, “We’d have been dead without your fire magics. Alucard barely got to us in time. Without fire, I’m sure he’d be hunting down another hunter and scholar, and good luck to him with _that._ Not a lot to go around, these days.”

She blinks at him, and then, unexpectedly, she laughs. It’s quiet and tired, but a laugh nonetheless. “I do not think I can begin to understand you,” she says.

He raises an eyebrow at that. “And what’s not to understand?”

“Plenty,” she assures. “How is a man so rude, violent, temperamental, and apathetic...and yet simultaneously he feels guilt over actions not his responsibility, and seeks to offer protection, reassurance and comfort?”

“Is this a riddle?” Trevor asks, bored. “Always hated those. Rather stab things.”

She sighs in exasperation and shakes her head, but there’s a weary, amused smile at her lips. “Such a mystery.” 

Trevor ignores that.

“Thank you for your stories, by the way.”

“Hmm?”

“In the wagon. When you shared with me the stories of your Belmont Hold, and your family.”

“They’re just stories. It passed the time.”

“They are precious to you. You have pride in them. Stories are more valuable than gold. As a Speaker, I promise I will care for them and treasure them as you do.” 

Trevor shrugs awkwardly at that, but his gaze lingers for a long time on the Belmont crest inlaid on the whip’s handle. Those stories _were_ precious to him; they were all that was left of his entire family. It doesn’t seem right that spoken words could be more highly coveted than food or gold, but Sypha wasn’t wrong. And it’s almost a relief, to be able to share those little moments of Belmont history, and to know they wouldn’t be decried as blasphemy and black magic. 

“Thanks,” he says, after an awkward moment of silence. “For that. I guess.”

She smiles faintly, and nods.

Her good humor doesn’t last long after that, and she begins nodding off wearily again. “Rest,” Trevor repeats. “Alucard will be a bit, and food will be longer. We’ll wake you when it’s ready.”

“If something attacks—”

“I’ll stab anything that comes through that entrance,” Trevor says. Jokes aside, he didn’t intend to go down without a fight, in the rare chance something _did_ come.

“Except Alucard,” Sypha warns.

“No promises.”

“You are impossible,” she grouses, but she’s already yawning again. Wearily, she lays down on the dirt floor, dragging her blanket around her. 

She’s still shivering beneath it, so Trevor pulls the one from around his shoulders and tosses it over her as well. She immediately frowns at him. “This is yours.”

“I’ll get my cloak when I’m done with this,” he says, gesturing at his whip. “Nearly finished.”

“A mystery,” she murmurs, as she drags the second blanket more comfortably around her, and settles into sleep. Her breathing evens out in minutes, and soon she’s dead to the world once more.

Trevor finishes caring for his weapons, retrieves his now warm cloak, and settles down to keep vigil until Alucard’s return.

* * *

The next three days are not what Trevor would call comfortable by any stretch of the imagination.

The blizzard rages for the rest of that first day, and well into the night, before the howling winds finally dwindle and move on. The snow is piled high outside, thick and impossible to traverse without the proper equipment. It’s as though the storm itself intended to trap them in a frozen grave.

Alucard is, loathe as Trevor is to admit it, their saving grace. The storm poses neither threat nor difficulty for him, and his mobility is all that keeps them alive and almost comfortable for the duration of its rage. He recovers their supplies the first morning, bringing back foodstuffs, some of the camping gear, and a few packets of herbal medicines and remedies from their stores. He restocks their stack of firewood whenever they’re getting low, maintains the entrance of their hiding hole so they don’t suffocate, and even manages to hunt down a rabbit or two for dinner.

“Did you drain them dry, first?” Trevor asks, when he sees the pair of animals held up by their ears in Alucard’s hand. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Belmont. Rabbit is hardly more than a mouthful.”

Which is frankly more than he’d ever needed to know. Trevor’s sorry he asked.

They’d definitely be dead without Alucard’s intervention. But what he doesn’t make for is good company, and after two days of being trapped in a hole with the vampire, Trevor is about ready to stake _himself._ The bastard pisses him off like it’s his job, and obviously enjoys it, to judge by that dry, condescending smirk he makes every time he opens his damned mouth. 

Even without him, there’s not much to _do_ in their little dirt hole other than sleep, eat and wait. They can talk, but Trevor’s never been much of a talker, and the thought bores him. So do the conversations between Sypha and Alucard, which are usually about magic and languages and science and other such things that Trevor can’t be bothered to give a shit about. He looks over each of his knives and his whip at least three more times, until Alucard finally snaps at him that he’s cleaned them enough and to leave it well enough alone. 

Trevor could really, _really_ do with a drink. 

He’d love to get away, to walk for a bit, cool his head, and burn off some energy. But there’s not a chance of that happening, with the storm and the snow outside like it is, and the cave’s confines are cramped and tight. There’s hardly any room to stretch out for a sleep, let alone pace, and he feels trapped the longer they’re stuck here. The only time he escapes it at all is long enough to head outside for a piss, and even that’s miserable—partly because of the freezing conditions, and partly because Alucard is required to dig them far enough out to do their business, and _nobody_ is happy with that. 

By the time the storm ends, they’re going to be lucky if they haven’t killed _each other,_ much less ruined their chances for killing Dracula.

When the winds finally die down, at the end of the second night, it’s to everyone’s relief. And yet, their misery isn’t over just yet. Although Alucard reports the storm has ended, he confirms the snow cover is so thick it will take even him a little while to clear them a path.

“And the wagon is frozen solid, too,” he adds. “And half buried. The road is impassable, even if we could free up the wagon and find the horses again.”

“I can thaw the wagon,” Sypha says. “And prepare the road, if I do not have to fight a storm to do so. But I must rest another day to restore my reserves, before I can cast such great magic.” 

She had been getting better over the past two days. Her strength had returned, and her shivering had stopped. She’d been warm again. Trevor had even seen her cast a few tiny spells, to build their fire up during times when Alucard had been out attending to some task or other. But if she thought she needed to rest, before she would be back to her old self, then rest she’d get. Even if it meant spending another day in this stinking dirthole, because there was no place else to go.

Trevor eyes Alucard warningly. The vampire does not look happy with the delay, and Sypha must realize it, because she says, “I am sorry for the wait, Alucard.”

Trevor expects an argument, like the one Alucard had used to protest taking shelter in a blizzard. But to his surprise, the vampire merely nods slowly, and says, “Very well. I am sure your recovery is vital to our mission…and your abilities will undoubtedly make travel more efficient for us, in the long run. If a day more is what it takes...then so be it.”

So they stay for one more day. But this time, at least, Trevor can leave the little dirt hole, and not spend the whole day cooped up inside of it. The outside is cold, still, but without the violent winds and icy flurries, it’s a different sort of cold entirely. It’s crisp, chilly but clean and fresh smelling, and reminds him of home. 

_Home._ Only a few days away, now. It’s been a long time since he’s been back. He almost didn’t return at all. 

Alucard alternates his time between cutting a path through the snow to the wagon, and patrolling the area for potential threats. Now that the storm is over, both natural and unnatural threats will start slinking their way out as well. 

That leaves Trevor with menial tasks like collecting firewood, but he’s happy enough with the job as long as he’s moving. Most of his strength is back by now, and he’s eager to just be _doing_ something again instead of sitting in a cave for two days. Staying extremely still and curling up in a hole to die is something he only tends to do when very, very drunk. 

They let Sypha rest, for most of the day. She needs it; she’d suffered the most from the storm. She’s healing nicely, and Alucard insists that her feet look much better than they had before. The extra day should wipe the fatigue from her, and strengthen her magic once more. Enough, at least, to reach the Hold and maybe have a chance to rest for real, in comfort.

Belmont Hold. Trevor turns to face the direction he knows the old home is in. He can’t see it through the trees, and it’s still miles away, but it’s there. 

Just a few more days, and then maybe all of this will be over.

* * *

By some miracle, the horses survived. 

Alucard had tracked them down by scent, after they’d returned to the wagon. While Sypha thawed the frozen wood and removed the ice shackling the wheels to the earth, and while Trevor dug it out of the snow and repacked their supplies, he’d gone hunting for them. They’d wandered several miles off the path, but they had managed to neither freeze to death nor be eaten by a hungry predator, and Alucard leads them back through the woods and the thick snow to the wagon carefully. 

Trevor’s not entirely sure what to make of that. It doesn’t seem likely that _all_ of them should have made it through the storm. He’s seen what blizzards like that do, to both man and beast. There had been one too many miracles at work, these past few days. And he can’t help but wonder, deep down in the dark, dusty recesses of his mind, what that means. 

He certainly knows how the church feels about Belmonts—but of late, the church worships at the altar of its own greed, not its so-called God. The prattle that comes from their mouths isn’t worth listening to. 

But perhaps their little mismatched crew and their deadly quest have earned a little divine intervention from the _true_ higher power. The one the church has forgotten, the one the House of Belmont had once faithfully served, in order to serve humanity in turn. 

It’s an odd, and not entirely comfortable, thought. He’s spent most of his life believing he’d been abandoned by religion. Hating priests. Avoiding the church, and its misguided flock of followers. To think the real thing might be following him after all this time is difficult to accept. 

So he doesn’t, and shoves the thought back into the dusty corners of his mind once again, and resolves to worry about it later. 

Or maybe never. Never sounds good, too.

Trevor feeds the horses—the animals have to be starving—and hitches them up to the wagon. They’re skittish, after spending so much time in Alucard’s company, but once the vampire retreats into the wagon they calm down and allow themselves to be harnessed without fuss. He takes the reins while Sypha, bundled in both blankets, sits next to him on the wagon bench and gestures with her fingers. 

At once, the snow ahead of them for the next hundred feet or so on the road parts, like in the story of Moses. The snow piles itself high on either side of them, forming a tiny, magically-made frozen canyon. The dirt road beneath is frozen and hard-packed, not muddy from snow-melt, and easy enough for the horses to walk. Trevor snaps the reins to urge them forward, and the animals take off at a cautious but brisk pace.

“Not bad,” he notes. “How long can you keep that up without wearing out?”

“A bit,” Sypha says. “I will warn you when I must take a break. Moving so much is taxing, but doable.”

“An impressive feat, even so,” Alucard acknowledges. “Well done.”

“Even with frequent breaks, we can still make Belmont Hold in a few days,” Trevor says. “As long as we don’t meet another storm.” 

“Is that likely?” Sypha asks, alarmed.

Trevor shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll warn you if I can tell something’s coming. Maybe the two of you will listen, this time.”

“Speakers learn from history,” Sypha says. “I will not make the same mistake twice.” Behind her, Alucard doesn’t say a word, but the disgruntled hum of acknowledgement is more than enough to say what he thinks on the matter.

Trevor considers that a win.

 _Home._ He’s almost home. The thought alone is enough to drive him mad with grief and delirious with relief. If only it were under better circumstances. He can’t imagine what the family would think of his situation; a plan to kill Dracula, with the aid of his own son. Would they be horrified at him inviting a vampire into the Hold, or sing praises for spearheading the assault that would bring down their greatest enemy?

One way or another, it ends soon. Belmont Hold _must_ have the answers to defeating Dracula. And Dracula’s demise has been the goal of the House of Belmont for generations, for _centuries._ One way or another, it will finally be concluded—either Dracula will die, or the last survivor of the Belmont Clan will. One way or another, that duty will be no more. 

The fire that burns inside at the thought is enough to warm him through _any_ storm. Trevor sets his eyes ahead, towards Belmont Hold—towards _home_ —and marches ever forward, ready to finish this at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One thing that perplexed me in S2 was how Alucard was constantly doing his best to piss Trevor off, but then inexplicably decided to take orders from him in the last couple episodes. He and Trevor's talk here was an attempt to explain at least a teensy bit why Alucard would be willing to let Trevor call the shots on his particular mission.
> 
> Thanks for reading! For those of you who asked me to post this, I hope you enjoyed it :)


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